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The Shut-Up Gun

By Catherine Rampell June 4, 2012 1:15 pmJune 4, 2012 1:15 pm

Photo courtesy of Kazutaka Kurihara

6/7/12 | Updated with editors’ note about a similar interview elsewhere.

Ready, aim, shut ’em up.

Those are the instructions for the SpeechJammer, an invention I wrote about for The New York Times Magazine’s innovations issue. Aim the SpeechJammer gun at a nearby blabbermouth, and he’ll have his voice played back to him with a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This gums up the brain’s cognitive processes and forces him to stop speaking.

Following is an e-mail interview with Kazutaka Kurihara, a researcher in Tsukuba, Japan, who created the SpeechJammer with Koji Tsukada. The exchange has been lightly edited for clarity.

Q.

What was the inspiration for this device?

A.

One day I just came by a science museum and enjoyed a demonstration about Delayed Auditory Feedback (D.A.F.) at a cognitive science corner. When I spoke into a microphone, my voice came back to me after a few-hundred-millisecond delay. Then, I could not continue to speak any more. That’s fun! (BTW you also may try this at your nearest science museum, because this demonstration is so popular.) They say it is one of the well-known characteristics of the human auditory system. Then I thought, “Oh yeah, it can be applicable to some other domains!”
Around that time, my research interest was about developing a system that controls appropriate turn-taking at discussions, and was looking for technologies to enforce some discussion rules for participants. Then I came up with the gun-type SpeechJammer idea utilizing D.A.F. That’s the destiny.

I soon consulted a friend of mine, Koji “the gadget master,” who had once demonstrated for me a “Directional Speaker” that can convey sound tens of meters with a very sharp direction sensitivity. I contacted him because direction sensitivity was one of the key features that SpeechJammer should have, and I needed a strong partner who was good at hardware. After I explained my idea, he soon agreed to join my project. It was a marriage between science and gadgets!

Q.

How long did it take to develop?

A.

Thanks to Koji, to build up prototype devices was a summerlong project.

Q.

Have you created a working prototype yet? If so, how have you gone about testing it?

A.

We obtained many lessons learned by testing our prototypes. Side effects are not a problem when the volume of sound is properly controlled. On the other hand, a problem is that situations where this prototype is effectively working are very limited. And also the problems of individual differences and learning effects are also challenging. The SpeechJammer project is still on the first stage of research.

Q.

Have you gotten any interest from manufacturers who would like to start selling these devices, and/or are you thinking of selling them yourselves?

A.

Yes, I got e-mails from many people who want to sell SpeechJammer. But our current prototype has many, many problems for practical use. It is just at the early stage of research. So I am sorry to inform you that currently this device is not available for everyone.

Q.

What are the main applications for this invention? Do you think people would actually use this seriously, as opposed to for fun? It seems like it would be very rude to forcibly quiet someone during a class or meeting this way.

A.

To answer the above two questions, let me talk a bit about the philosophy of SpeechJammer. I love freedom of speech of course, but this freedom should be equally given to everyone. As I wrote in the paper, one of our goals is to prevent “the louder, the stronger” situations:

Fair discussions are essential for resolving conflicts through communication. We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking. However, some people tend to lengthen their turns or deliberately interrupt other people when it is their turn in order to establish their presence rather than achieve more fruitful discussions. Furthermore, some people tend to jeer at speakers to invalidate their speech. These are typical abuses of speech that allow “the louder, the stronger” to gain control of the proceedings.

I agree that this technology might be abused by bad people. But think about the future when everyone has a portable-type SpeechJammer device built into cellphones. If someone abuses this device and takes advantage of you in talking, you also can use it against the bad people. Different from the conventional weapons such as samurai swords and pistols, SpeechJammer is “dialogue-left,” i.e., it causes no killing and harm but leaves room for discussions with each other after switching the devices off.

We live in the 21st century, when it is said that communication is the most important means of resolving conflicts. We hope SpeechJammer is used for building the peaceful world.

Editors' Note: June 7, 2012After publication of this post, the writer and editors learned that the Japanese researcher had supplied virtually identical e-mail responses in an earlier interview with at least one other English-language publication, Wired.com.

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